From Substack to YouTube, these are the social platforms cracking down on AI slop

As tech companies race to weave AI into every inch of their products, they're discovering there's a fine line between embracing new technology and flooding users with low-quality, machine-generated content.

Here's how major social platforms that rely on creators, including YouTube and Substack, are dealing with the proliferation of AI content.

A YouTube spokesperson told Business Insider that the policy isn't new but an important clarification of YouTube's long-standing "inauthentic content" policy, intended to reduce ambiguity for content creators who have been demonetized for repetitive, low-effort, or emotionally manipulative videos.

Music partners can choose to disclose whether their content uses generative AI entirely or partly, but YouTube can supplement those disclosures with its own signals. Standard pitch correction, such as Auto-Tune, doesn’t count as generative AI under YouTube's policies.

TikTok isn't shying away from generative AI. The company and its owner, ByteDance, offer an array of AI tools for content creators on its marquee app and video editor CapCut. Creators who post on its e-commerce platform, TikTok Shop, have been ramping up the use of AI to sell products this year. Much of the company's tech is built around ByteDance's AI video model, Seedance 2.0.

Creators on Substack can also add a disclosure to their content explaining how they made it, such as noting that they used Claude for copyediting, or if they don't use AI at all.

Pinterest also added a tool that lets users limit the amount of AI-generated content appearing in their feeds.

"We provide users with controls to decide whether they want to see more or less GenAI content in their feed," a Pinterest spokesperson told Business Insider. "Additionally, our Community Guidelines apply to GenAI content, and our recommendation system prioritizes high-quality content, regardless of if it's human-created or GenAI."

Meta wants users to create and engage with content made with its own AI tools, so, for the most part, it has let content like the famed Shrimp Jesus run free.

In June, Meta started putting its "AI info" label on advertisements that use AI, whether they're created by Meta's own tools or third-party editing services.

If your LinkedIn posts sound a little too polished, readers may be taking notice.